Upkeep and repairs on the farm.
Quonset (40x80) fully insulated with both waste oil and supplemental natural gas heaters...all new wiring and lighting installed in 2012.
All concrete floors, with movable over-head hoist, including various shop equipment like chop saw, grinder, drill press, press, and more...
All new covering on outside - top and ends in 2019.
Fully graveled & maintained lane and yard. We have a rear mount tractor snow blower (loader) we use to keep lane/yard free of snow in winter.
Owners live on premises - with security lights.

2012 complete rennovation

waste oil burner, hoist, press

2019 complete new covering.

50 years ago we built the Quonset on our farm. Rasmussen Lumber out of Manilla was hired to do the work. This first picture was taken of that construction.
The day they tinned the roof, I told dad I wasn't going to school today so I could watch and take pictures - fortunately he didn't give me any arguments.

1969

View looking east.

2019

View looking east.
In the original picture there was an old windbreak we had taken down with plans on starting the new one.

Croghan Construction is putting a new cover on the Quonset for us.
I told them that it was a lot easier for me to climb to the top 50 years ago.

View from the boom truck

The nailers (purlins) are from 2x8, 2x10, and 2x12 boards that I ripped into 4 and 6 inch widths to fasten the new metal roof to.

Top left - stack of boards stored overhead in the barn We had a lot of 100+ year old lumber stored in our barn that was from various houses and buildings we took down over the last 60 years. Dad would find old houses and buildings to take down during the off-season of farming - generally in the winter...we even salvaged flooring from the old grade school.
I always thought the hardest part of the job was pulling all of the nails out of the boards.

Pile of boards almost used up.

Table saw that dad purchased in the late 1950s.

Dad also liked to save/move whole buildings. When I think of how much work it was and he really didn't make a lot of money from all of these projects - and consider today how most of the old buildings are just burned down or razed with an excavator and hauled to the dump - how times have changed.
Back then we mostly did it because that was what people did years ago - tough physical jobs weren't thought of as work but just a way of life.

1969

1964 The old grade school that we salvaged a lot of the hard-wood flooring and floor joists.
This building stood between First and Second Streets - the west side was the Catholic Church street.

After various people salvaged what they wanted from the building, the rest was burned and hauled away.
If you look closely, you can see the bottom section of the spiral fire escape on the north side of the building.

1967 The old Lester "Lead" Hargens home across the alley to the west from Thriftys Food.

Harold & Richard Schmidt helped us lower the 2nd floor of the house.
The JD A belonged to Harold and the JD 630 was our tractor.
Dad then converted it into a garage that was purchased by Clausie Strosahl.

Amos Kusel thinking things over on the next steps in lowering the 2nd story.

In March of this year we put a new cover on the granary. Granaries were very common back in the 1950s and 60s. This one was built in 1959. My mother tells me the story that each day I would go out to "help" but one day I didn't go out anymore...They basically figured out that once the construction of the walls got too high for me to climb that I was scared and wouldn't go out anymore - I was 3 years old - so I guess I've been involved with construction and farming for 60 years - I'm now 63.

March 2019

If you are not familiar with a granary (it's NOT spelled/pronounced grainery), the building has 4 outside walls connected by 4 walls in a plus shape inside. 2x4 after 2x4 are nailed on top of one another to form the walls and the "plus" inside is connected by overlaps with the outside walls. Then underneath we have bridge beams and one steel I-beam to support the weight of 4000 bushels overhead. The concrete walls are 8 inches thick.

Doug Kusel painting 2003

I believe that was Orland Fara's wooden ladder we borrowed.

Back to Dave Kusel's main page